Water wars

This Monday was World Water Day, an international observance intended to draw attention to the millions of people around the world who don’t have access to safe drinking water. Indeed, the U.N. released a report featuring the jaw-dropping statistic that water-borne illness kills more people every year than all forms of violence combined — including war.

But here in the United States, our problems are of excess, and the controversy was predictably self-centered. It involved bottled water.

Annie Leonard released her newest video, clunkily titled The Story of Bottled Water. Bottled water has become a serious problem in this country, accounting for Texas-sized islands of trash in the ocean, ever-mounting piles in landfills and — to produce these disasters — 17 million barrels of oil a year.

Leonard’s video scorns the bottled water industry for manufacturing demand by drumming up stories of contaminated tap water, when, in reality much bottled water is tap water. The rest is water that the bottling giants take from springs and other publicly-owned natural sources, often without paying for the favor.

The Story of Bottled Water probably won’t go on to be as big as The Story of Stuff, but quickly racked up a significant view count, provoking consternation from big players Coke, Pepsi and Nestle. A trade group released its own rebuttal video. It defends bottled water as a lifesaver in natural disasters: No mention of what percent of sales are for that purpose, however. And where Leonard claims that 80 percent of plastic bottles are never recycled, the industry shrinks that number to 60.

Even so, we’ve got a big problem on our hands, and one that’s much easier to solve than the global lack of potable water. As consumers, we can limit your use of bottled water to emergencies — real ones, like (knock on wood) earthquakes — by carrying a refillable bottle everywhere (hint: buy a few, and stash them in different places). And, of course, we should recycle.

From a policy perspective, local governments have got to start charging water bottlers full price for the water they take from the public.